Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Probably I am mad when I read the history of Indian Economic Thought………

I read an interesting excerpt from Patrick French’s biography of V S Naipaul. Mr V S wrote in the 60s which Patrick says “After nearly a year of travel and enquiry in India for the book, Vidia returned to London and wrote a letter to Moni Malhoutra, an IAS officer with whom he had stayed in the district of Faizabad, UP:”

V S letter: "The point that one feels inescapable is the fact of India's poverty; and how deep is one's contempt for those Indians who, finding no difficulty in accepting one standard in India and another outside it, fail to realise this, and are failing to work night and day for the removal of this dreadful insult and humiliation.... The lavatories at Palam (airport) were literally covered with shit and the aerodrome officer could only speak of the shortage of staff (i.e. sweepers). I wonder, wonder if the shitting habits of Indians are not the key to all their attitudes.... So goodbye to shit and sweepers; goodbye to people who tolerate everything; goodbye to all the refusal to act; goodbye to the absence of dignity; goodbye to the poverty; goodbye to caste and that curious pettiness which permeates that vast country; goodbye to people who, though consulting astrologers, have no sense of their destiny as men.... Not only must caste go, but all those sloppy Indian garments; all those saris and lungis; all that squatting on the floor to eat, to write, to serve in a shop, to piss.... Probably I am mad. But it seems to me that everything conspires to keep India down."

Mr V.S was “Aged barely 17, he had written to his sister Kamla, then studying at BenaresHinduUniversity: "I am glad you told off those damned inefficient, scheming Indians. I am planning to write a book about these damned people and the wretched country of theirs, exposing their detestable traits. Grill them on everything." Now it was time for Vidia to write that book, to grill them on everything:An Area of Darknesswas the result, offering a passionate analysis”